Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 955
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, October 16, 1870
“Will you be made whole?” John 5:6.
JESUS spoke to the impotent man who had been afflicted for thirty-eight years, and enquired of him, “Will you be made whole?” It seems a very strange question to ask. Who would not be made whole? Would the poor man have been lying at the pool if he had not been anxious for healing? Must there not have been in the very look of his face, as he gazed upon the Savior, an answer to that question, superseding all necessity of saying it? Yet as our Lord spoke no superfluous words, it may be that He perceived that the paralysis of the man’s body had, to a very painful degree, benumbed his mind and brought on a paralysis of his will.
He had hoped till his heart was sick. He had waited till despondency had dried up his spirits. And now it had almost come to this, that he scarcely cared whether he was made whole or not. The bow had been bent so long that all its elasticity was destroyed. He had hungered till appetite, itself, was gone. He was now listless, with an indifference made up of sullen repining at his disappointments and blank hopelessness for the future. The Savior touched a chord which needed to vibrate when He enquired as to his will. He aroused, by that question, a dormant faculty whose vigorous exercise, it may be, was one of the first essentials to a cure. “Will you be made whole?” was the enquiry of a profound investigation, the scientific probe of a great Physician, the resurrection from the grave of a great master power of manhood.
Now, in the matter of preaching the Gospel today, it may seem almost an impertinent question for me to put to each one of you gathered here who as yet are not saved, “Will you be made whole?” “Surely,” you will reply, “everyone desires salvation.” Believe me, I am not quite so certain as you are of the truth of that statement. “But our being here,” says one, “our having been here so long, and our attentive listening to the Gospel go to prove that we are willing enough to be made whole if we could but discover where health is to be found, and what is that balm of Gilead of which so much is
said.”
And yet I should not wonder if there are many here who through having waited so long are beginning to be paralyzed in their once earnest desires. And others, who having been here so long and never having been very anxious, at last have come to occupy these pews as a mere matter of custom—they have no hearty will towards the wholeness of soul which the Good Physician is always prepared to give to those who seek His help. I am persuaded that instead of the question being an unnecessary one, it is in every congregation one of the first to be pressed upon the hearer’s attention.
To get a truthful answer to this enquiry from the inmost soul of every hearer is my object now, believing that it will be a very healthful thing to you—even if you are honestly compelled to give a negative answer. It will at least expose the condition of the heart to itself, and that may be helpful towards something better. As God may help me, I shall labor to press upon you very earnestly this question this morning, O unsaved Man or Woman, “Will you be made whole?”
I. This question is necessary to be put, in the first place, because IT IS A QUESTION NOT ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD. It is not the same as this question, “Will you be saved from going to Hell?” Everyone answers, “Yes,” to that. “Will you be saved so as to go to Heaven?” At once, without deliberation, everyone says, “Yes.” For the harps of gold, for the songs of blessedness, for the eternity of immortality—we have all a heart and a strong desire—but that, you see, is not the question.
Heaven and its joys come out of what is proposed in our question, as a result, as a consequence—but that is not the matter in hand just now. We are not now saying to the thief, “Will you have your imprisonment remitted?” We are putting it to him in another shape—“Are you willing to be made an honest man?” We are not now saying to the murderer, “Are you anxious to escape the gallows?” We know his reply. The question we are putting to him is, “Will you be made righteous, upright, kind, forgiving, so as to give up all this evil of yours?”
It is not, “Are you willing to sit at the festival of mercy, and eat and drink as those do who are in health?” But, “Are you, yourself, willing to be made spiritually healthful, to pass through those Divine processes by which the foul disease of sin may be cast out, and the healthiness of sanctified manhood may be restored to you?”
To help you to know what that question means, let me remind you that there never were but two men who were whole, perfectly whole. And those may be called the two Adams—the first and the Second Adam. These both showed us in their own persons what a man would be if he were whole. The first Adam in the garden—we should all be willing to be in Paradise with him! We should all be delighted to walk beneath those never-withering boughs, and gather ever-luscious fruits, without toil, without suffering, without disease, without death.